~ Musings on Authorship & Inspiration

On Tempests, Teapots and David Gilmour

Over the past week or so, there’s been quite the kerfuffle in the Canadian literary scene over some person named David Gilmour, who has apparently written some books and teaches part time at the University of Toronto.

He evidently teaches books by “serious heterosexual guys”. “Real guy-guys” in fact. All of which sounds amusingly pompous and absurd to me. As in: are we still really taking someone who utters these kinds of throwbacks to some early twentieth century version of literary machismo seriously?

I mean, I get it. It’s the issue of canon, of being concerned about the uneven playing field and the silencing of women’s voices that arose at a paradigmatic level because women’s writings were taken less seriously and were not chosen as part of the Great Works or included on reading lists, back in the day. The sacred Canon of English Literature was imbalanced, not just at the stage of creation (more men than women writing and publishing) but also at the subsequent stage of curation (women’s works not being chosen to be taught or anthologized etc.).

But at this point, the reality is that we’re generally deeply conscious of those inherent biases, and the process of trying to mitigate for that skew is ongoing. I frankly don’t think that the occasional blowhard really makes a big difference to that process, nor is necessarily indicative of any larger trend or hidden bias.

When I was completing my English degree, I found that the vast majority of my profs were interesting, intelligent and meticulous thinkers who challenged me to dig deeper, to root out nuance and search out the rewarding insights buried in the works we studied. But there was also the inevitable ageing rock star type of prof who would stride into class and put on a two hour performance, which always included some proportion of statements made for effect, to stir up controversy and get students riled up. I never felt that such pronouncements were actually anything to worry about. They were just the declarations of a slightly pompous narcissist who liked to court the limelight and whom few people took seriously–a little like that annoying relative who gets drunk at family gatherings and says idiotic things that prompt people to roll their eyes.

And, contrary to what so many concerned people seem to fear about impressionable young minds and profs being in positions of authority, most people I’ve known in first or second year university have the discernment to recognize a windbag when they hear one, though many might still take the class for its entertainment value. BS detectors get installed at a pretty young age in this society.

And so, though Gilmour’s silliness gave me a bit of a laugh–I admit that I’ll have some trouble taking his work seriously after this, though if it’s a good read, I’ll give it its due–I don’t see why everyone’s so hot under the collar. As an admitted feminist and a woman writer of the sort whose work I fully expect he will never love enough to teach, I nonetheless don’t have any stake in what this man has to say about women writers. I don’t need his acceptance in order to keep writing.

Then again, as someone who writes romance and speculative fiction, I suppose I’m not really aspiring to the Canon and to acceptance by the literary lights in the first place. I’m rather used to being marginalized in those circles, not the least by some of my well-read, feminist friends, who dismiss my writing and decline to read it because it’s romance, or spec fic, and therefore not up to snuff. I’ve seen that shutter fall into place, that flutter of eyelids, signalling a cool dismissal of anything that has the whiff of genre about it.

I don’t mind. I’m not the one at the table who has pre-decided and written off a vast oeuvre of writing, some of it quite wonderful and some of it admittedly mediocre or worse, simply because it’s outside of what they’ve deemed is an acceptable standard. (Aside: though at least with romance, even mediocre often gives rise to eminently skimmable, page-turning prose. By contrast, there’s no mediocre quite as tedious as mediocre literary writing, or so I find: the plodding, functional prose; the characters swamped by a passive disinterest in the world; the endlessly meticulous description of mundane details of daily routines that rarely resolve into actual plot points; the mannered voice couched in present tense. Mediocrity comes in all forms–just ask Salieri).

I don’t push it with those friends, because I write my books to entertain. If it’s not your kind of book, and you feel it therefore won’t entertain, by whatever criteria you set for that, then go forth in this world, curl up with the kind of book you love, and be happy. I’m not trying to please all the people.

Here is what it comes down to for me: long before my books went “out there”, to be ignored by the David Gilmores of the world, I was writing for the love of it. That will continue. The End.

*BTW, here is what Margaret Atwood actually had to say about the whole business. I ultimately agree. And of course, I found the whole tempest in a teapot incident even funnier when I learned that she is one of the jurors for the uber prestigious Giller Prize, for which Gilmour is a nominee.

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7 thoughts on “On Tempests, Teapots and David Gilmour”

Interesting – I had just discovered your post in my email when up popped a reference to Gilmour in The Book Riot. http://bookriot.com/2013/09/26/david-gilmour-shallow-misguided-wrong/?doing_wp_cron=1380458990.0666821002960205078125 Funny how that always seems to happen. Before today, I had never heard of David Gilmour. But I HAVE heard of Kat Anthony! LOL
This man is obviously somebody I would not want to study under, any more than he would want me in one of his classes. I majored in English in a small private liberal arts college, from the years 1957-61 – way before the period of feminism – and not one of my professors (most of whom were men) looked down on women students. After I took a General Studies course called Law and Society, the professor asked if I had ever considered becoming a lawyer. After a chemistry course for non-science majors, the prof asked if I wanted to change majors to chemistry. And my major professor strongly encouraged me to go for a PhD and become a college professor myself, and actually he was very disappointed when I changed course and became a librarian instead. When I was in Cornell getting my MA, one of my professors there thought I was nuts to become a librarian – all that 9 to 5, not enough freedom to do what you want to do (I didn’t agree with that – “publish or perish” doesn’t put any pressute on you?) So I never had any experiences of being put down because I was female. In fact, I dedicated v.2 of the Ki’shto’ba series to a range of my undergrad profs – all now, sadly, deceased.

Thanks for commenting, Lorinda. I’m also glad you shared your experiences of the respect you received from professors who, even before the rise of the feminist movement in the mainstream, respected you as a person, and recognised your intelligence and potential, rather than being dismissive on the basis of gender!

I admit I felt a little taken aback at those who seemed to use this one guy’s utterings to denounce the entrenched attitudes in academia because in my experience, academia (at least in the English departments I’ve been exposed to, which does not include the one at U of T) is more conscious than the wider world, of the skews and problems inherent in the paradigms used for determining canon etc. I remember many an in-depth discussion of such issues over the course of my degree–nor is there a simple solution that creates the perfect balance, which is why it is still a work in progress.

There may be some people around who feel the way Gilmour does–I can’t know what their inner hearts conceal as it were–but I didn’t find that it generally showed up in attitudes, which were always respectful of the gamut of writers and works (the possible exception there may be the mentioned “aging rock star” prof figure–and there I wasn’t even sure if it was actual beliefs or posturing for effect).

Just a little side note to show how the temper of the times has changed: My major professor, a very courtly man in his late forties or fifties, told us students that it’s OK to say Dickens, Thackeray, Melville, Fitzgerald, etc., but you are never to say Austen or Dickinson. You must refer to a female writer by both her names – Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson. It was simply a sign of respect for womanhood, I guess. Of course, that kind of separating courtesy – putting the woman on the pedestal – is long gone!

The other interesting trend I noticed was one of writing off the stuff Gilmour writes because of these underlying attitudes– think I saw it in a comment on the u of t prof’s blog. Really?! Isn’t that one of the first things we learn in English? That it isn’t as simple as that? The work can often be much more nuanced and complex and wonderful than the author seems to be. Where personality and ego often seem to elide potential depth, sometimes the writing gets past that, and discloses such different, delicate, complex and wonderful things (heh–that’s another one to ask Salieri about) that do not appear to make up the psyche of the person one meets, who evidently penned the work. In that sense, I can’t necessarily assume that his comments reflect the quality of his published oeuvre.

It’s a fascinating debate, particularly once the stakes get higher. We had a discussion about it a few months ago in the context of Orson Scott Card, his homophobia and his outspoken attitudes re marriage equality, even as his books often reveal moving, deeply emotional narratives of acceptance, tolerance etc. So is one justified in boycotting his work–and any derivative works, like the soon-to-be released film adaptation of Ender’s Game–on the basis of his personal stances? Should the work stand alone, or is this the best way to signal displeasure, because this is his means of making a living and ties into sales of his future books etc.? Once there is no direct connection to an author’s income (i.e. the author is deceased), I think the work should stand alone and be scrutinized for itself as well as potentially in context. But while the author still lives, and profits from it, and in the latter case, in his personal capacity, uses his high profile as an author to propagate potentially damaging or disturbing things that might or might not be hate speech? Yeah. Not easy.

This is a tiny bit unrelated, but bear with me. I just read “Feral” by George Monbiot, and I think we can argue he’s as “guy’s guy” as it gets. (Fishing alone by sea kayak miles off the coast and fearlessly exploring all the wilderness that remains on earth.) I really had to fight to read the book because my preconceptions about what nonfiction should be made me resistant to the language used. This is creative nonfiction, evocatively written, and interspersed with facts and figures. I learned a lot from it, and I’m glad I read it. In the end, I really liked it. Perhaps your man Gilmour simply lacks the ability to “work for his pleasure”?

The turmoil around Gilmour actually makes me want to read something he’s written. To see what he’s all about. Maybe this is calculated. Maybe that was the desired result.

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